When ever I find myself feeling frazzled by the distractions and never-ending list of to-dos, the answer to finding peace always come back to focus. “Focus, focus, focus!” my heart would say, while my mind is off racing in a hundred different directions.
Lately, when people ask me, “How are you?” my response has been “Busy”.
It’s true. I have been busy. Yet when I reflected deeper into why I’m busy, I discovered that I am mostly busy thinking about how busy I am.
I mean, yeah, I have a lot of tasks on my plate, but when I observed myself from a place of silent presence, I discovered that a huge amount of my time and energy was spent cycling through my list of growing to-do items in my head.
I am privileged to introduce Rahi to our TSN family. Rahi was my beloved yoga teacher during my 3 months stay in India, and had guided me to bliss on many occasions. To me, she is the embodiment of grace. The following was originally an email she had sent to me, which we edited to share with you here, along with a practical meditation that anyone can do at home. With love, -Tina
An event such as this reminds us of the impermanent nature of our lives.
It helps us remember that what's most important is to love each other,
to be there for each other, and to treasure each moment we have that we are alive.
This is the best that we can do for those who have died:
we can live in such a way that they continue, beautifully, in us.~Thich Nhat Hanh
When I saw the horrific scenes of the terrible earthquake and the tsunami that have devastated Japan and its people, my first response was one of deep pain.
All that my family, friends and I could talk about, and keep seeing again and again were the ongoing pain-filled visuals that every TV channel around the world was beaming into every home.
Then came the emails, facebook postings, tweets, phone calls, etc….everyone was reaching out to every other person possible spreading the alarm and concern.
The cataclysmic events in Japan became personal because a dear student and now a fellow yoga teacher was living there. I was desperate to know that he and his family were safe.
After reading last week’s article on problem solving, Tina casually mentioned wanting to wake up early. I felt inspired to write a piece on how to wake up early. For the past 4 months, I’ve been consistently waking up early—5am specifically. This article contain tips I’ve found helpful to become an early riser.
4:45 a.m. arrives and our bedroom becomes a full on symphony of battling alarms: my husband’s starts at 4:45, mine follows at 5:00, his chimes back in again at 5:00 (in unison with mine), and depending on the snooze capacity that day … we may even have one more finale at 5:15 a.m.
The coffee grinder is also programmed to go off at 5 a.m. The aroma and grinding sound of coffee beans travels all the way from the downstairs kitchen to our bedroom upstairs.
I recently discovered a simple technique for problem solving that I thought you guys would love. But before diving in to this effective problem solving process, let me tell you the background story.
Lately, I’ve been struggling with this feeling of unproductive frustration. Maybe you can relate: feeling like you should be doing something, but you feel stuck, somehow unable to take productive action towards some end goal.
My problem is that I feel like I have a million things to do; yet I am finding it difficult to make any real progress with any of my projects. As a result, a whole day can go by without me making any progress forward.
Each day, when I look up to see that it’s already 3pm, I’ll start to feel frustrated at myself. I’ll feel annoyed that I had allowed another fruitless day to pass. I’d kick myself mentally for having “wasted” another precious day, which doesn’t help to inspire me to productivity or happiness.
As a child, I didn’t quite fit in the role of your average kid growing up. I guess you could say I was a typical sensitive, quiet child—a “Mama’s boy” if you will. I enjoyed music, reading, knitting, and skipping with the girls, while my older brother played pee-wee hockey, little league baseball, and collected sports memorabilia.
Evenings at our home usually meant my brother and father watching Hockey Night in Canada, while my mother and I would watch The Love Boat, Dallas, or whatever other cheesy 80’s television program was playing at the time.
Many evenings and several hockey games later, my brother and father got to use the big color TV in the living-room, while mom and I got stuck watching the little black and white in the bedroom. That hardly seemed fair. But as long as Mom and I were together, I felt safe.
I recently read a gem of a book called “The Millionaire Fastlane”. Despite feeling skeptical by its title, its phenomenal content surprised and delighted me. I’ll say more about the book at the end of this article. Until then, enjoy this article from the book’s author, sharing an important message for us all.
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying.
Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day.
Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now.
There are only so many tomorrows.~Michael Landon
Today I am confessing something big.
Not many men would disclose this information, but I will.
My two favorite movies are Titanic and The Notebook — yes, two perennial favorites among the ladies and unmentionable by my male counterparts.
The day I got the news that I had won the good mood blogger contest, felt like winning the lottery. Two months of built-up excitement, anxiety, and hard-earned daily marketing efforts had finally come to an end.
I remember the moment it happened, I felt a sense of relief and elation wash over my body, and I finally took a deep breath—for the first time in a few months, it seemed.
That same day, just a few hours later, I was running around doing last minute preparations for Ryan’s birthday party, and dealing with other personal drama. Suffice it to say that I was no longer in this bubble of joy and elation.
Even with over two months of built up anticipation and hard work, in a matter of hours, my mind was already racing for the next moment, seeking some other problem to hold on to.
Jeremy & Tina. Feb 12, 2009. Wedding day. Kauai, Hawaii.
When it comes to relationships, we all want love, security and support—all can be fulfilled by a healthy relationship. Aside from wanting the security that comes with a healthy relationship, we also want to appear to the world that our relationship is in fact a healthy one.
It’s funny that to the outside world, we try to display an image of perfection… with roses, smiles and rainbows.
But in reality, no matter how hard we try to appear perfect and got-our-stuff-together, on some level, we are also flawed humans trying to cover up that we’re not perfect.
I am one of these flawed humans. I think part of the reality of being human is that we make mistakes, we lose our patience, and that we aren’t perfect. This is the basis for all relationships— healthy or otherwise.
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aeschleahIt took me a long time not to
judge myself through someone else's eyes.~Sally Field
Recently, my husband and I had several arguments—one after another, each fueled by the prior. This series of bickering pushed me to examine marriage: both the societal conditioning of how relationships should be and a reflection on my own journey in the love department.
I have been married for five years; but up until this past year, I often hesitated sharing my relationship in much depth, beyond the fact that we had celebrated two proms together in high school and experienced a unique journey thus far. Although I knew my husband was my life partner, lover, mentor, confidant—my one and only now and into old age—I was self-conscious about the layers beneath our outer shell.
Lessons in finding love can hurt and they can be a steep learning curve. Sometimes I wish I had more answers, sooner, especially when it came to discovering the source of true love.
In my late teens and early 20’s, I thought I knew love, but was far from it. In a quest to finding love, I would always try too hard to make the relationship work. It was an effort based on social ideals, but nothing to do with myself. I feared I couldn’t live up to someone else’s expectations. My expectations–for both of us– would fall short.
Despite trying hard to find love outside of myself, I realized at some point I had become who I thought he wanted me to be, not who I really was. I made mistakes. In making up for them, I spent so much time trying… trying to please, trying to be happy, trying to make it work… I no longer knew who the real me was.
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Sandra Lara
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